Advances in Autonomous Vehicles, Automation, and Robotics

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, autonomous vehicles and robotic systems have become a major research focus with wide-ranging applications in civil and military domains, including transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, healthcare, logistics, surveillance, and smart infrastructure. The growing need to explore diverse environments—on land, in the air, and underwater—has driven significant progress in the development of advanced unmanned vehicle systems. These include autonomous underwater vehicles, remotely operated vehicles, robotic ground vehicles, drones, quadcopters, robotic manipulators, and multimodal platforms capable of operating across multiple domains.

Advances in modeling, control techniques, and decision-making are critical for the design of reliable, efficient, and intelligent autonomous systems and robotics. At the same time, artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer vision, and sensor fusion are accelerating innovations, enabling enhanced adaptability, safety, and autonomy. This Topic welcomes original research and review articles addressing theoretical developments, algorithmic methods, system design, and experimental demonstrations.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Vehicle design and multimodal operations;
• Kinematics, dynamics, and modeling of autonomous systems and robot manipulators;
• Maneuvering, navigation, and localization;
• Path planning and collision avoidance;
• Perception and sensor/actuator systems;
• Cooperative and swarm robotics;
• Human–robot interaction and safety;
• Artificial intelligence (AI)- and machine learning (ML)-based control strategies;
• Linear and nonlinear control synthesis;
• Applications in ground, aerial, and underwater domains;
• Fault diagnosis and fault tolerance;
• Autonomous vehicle navigation, guidance, control, and path planning;
• Architecture, concepts, methods, and technologies for autonomous vehicle communications and networks.

Dr. Mai The Vu
Dr. Anh Tuan Vo
Dr. Caoyang Yu
Dr. Gong Xiang
Topic Editors